Monday, 22 December 2014

THE FOREIGN MUSLIM vs NATIVE MUSLIM NARRATIVE

http://www.littlemag.com/faith/irfanhabib.html

Dr. Habib above makes two fundamental
error : a) He assumes that India much before the British had become a proper
country with the Foreign-origin Turks , Persian & later Mughals (people
whom in all my posts here I will refer to as supercastes) being the centre of
Indian National consciousness. It fails to realize that the importance of these
communities had their cultural influences only limited to Delhi & the surrounding
areas on Hindus & Muslims living there. They ruled India indirectly through
local Kings who were more culturally & linguistically linked to their
subjects. This included Rajputs (both Hindus & Muslims) , Jats ( Hindus
& Sikhs) ,Pathans in North & similarly Nairs in Kerala , Ahoms in Assam
etc They were nevertheless centre to Indian Muslim-nationalism & part of
Pan-Indian Muslim identity beginning 1800s but not non-Muslims all over India.

b) He also equates usage of Shivaji by
Tilak against British as expression of Hindu nationalism( just bcz Shiv Sena
does it today). Shivaji is as integral to Marathi identity as ZainulAbideen of
the Kashmiri , Rana Pratap of Rajasthani , Talpur Mirs of Sindhi ,Tipu Sultan
of Karnataka, Rajaraja Chola for Tamil identity & henceforth . India became
a nation only on 15 August 1947 but Regional nationalities on the basis of
common languages & the National Consciousness that pioneers of Indian
nationalism like Lal-Bal-Pal had to invoke Regional Folks & Legends to
initiate the Nationalism process. The biggest drawback of this process was that
only hindu legends were invoked as the trio were hindus (& thus were not
much aware about local muslim legends) & much of the Muslim participation
to Freedom movement only happened after the Non-Cooperatation - Khilafat
Movement of 1921.

Prof. Habib’s writings often end up
giving much importance to the Supercaste muslims than the uppercaste muslims (Indian
uppercastes like Rajput,Jat,Gujjar) or lower caste muslims (Pasmanda, Kammis
,Momin Ansaris etc) . The Uppercaste muslims ruled parts of India directly like
their pre-Islamic ancestors or Hindu counterparts , they spoke the local
languages & were indigenous unlike the Supercastes who spoke Farsi &
Turki. The dominance of the Foreign-origin Muslim narrative over the Native
muslim narrative helped in creating the idea of “the other” between lower caste
Hindus & lower caste muslims , upper caste Muslims & Hindus